Tag Archives: Children Of Men

The holy trinity of internationally known Mexican directors, aka Alfonso Cuarón (Children Of Men), Guillermo Del Toro (the Hellboy films) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) will produce Mother And Child, a new ensemble drama from Colombian filmmaker Rodrigo García (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her), who also wrote the script.

The $4.5 million project, produced with Mockingbird Pictures president Julie Lynn, follows the intersecting lives of a 50-year-old woman, the daughter she gave up for adoption 35 years ago and a black woman looking to adopt a baby.

Set to begin a Los Angeles shoot in late December or January, the film continues Garcia’s examination of female characters found in his dramas “Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her” and “Nine Lives.”

In the meantime Garcia’s latest film, the intriguing supernatural thriller Passengers (see the trailer), currently watchable in Greece, Spain and Iceland, will open in the US on October 24th, in the UK on November 28th and in Australia on December 4th.

I saw Babylon A.D. today, and while I won’t write a full review of it at this time, I do have a few things I want to say. Babylon A.D. has been a pet project for acclaimed French director Mathieu Kassovitz (Gothika) for many years, with him being a huge fan of Maurice Georges Dantec’s source novel Babylon Babies. The film had a very troubled shoot and was delayed from its original release date in early 2008. Ultimately, most people had already dismissed the film before it was released, and the final nail in its coffin was when both Kassovitz and lead actor Vin Diesel (Find Me Guilty) trashed the film before its American release. Here’s the catch though: they were talking about the Fox version of the film.

Yes, there are two versions of Babylon A.D., one which runs 90 minutes and is distributed by 20th Century-Fox in the US, Canada, UK and some other countries, and another by Studio Canal, which doesn’t mention Fox at all and lasts 11 minutes more. Now this doesn’t mean that Fox simply cut out 11 minutes from the film and released it…they actually cut out much more, and replaced it with footage that isn’t in the longer version. I haven’t seen the Fox version, but I’ve read about it and can thus tell you that Fox basically removed significant parts of plot development and replaced them with action scenes that are completely absent from the Studio Canal version… Fox changed the beginning, Fox changed the ending, Fox changed the dialogues, Fox changed everything.

Everyone pretty much agrees that Terminator simply isn’t Terminator without Arnold Schwarzenegger. The current Governor of California has expressed interest and enthusiasm over the franchise’s fourth installment, and has even been open to the possibility of making a small appearance in the film. Turns out he won’t, but his voice might. Terminator producer Moritz Borman told Wired.com:

“I’m not going to answer the question about what we’re trying, or what we want, or what we’re toying with. It’s really up to what fits in the film or not. Maybe his voice, or maybe not. It’s really not settled.”

In other words, expect robots to say “I’ll be back” throughout the movie. Still, it’s better than nothing. Terminator Salvation has been filming in New Mexico under the direction of McG (the Charlie’s Angels movies) and is due for release on May 22nd, 2009 in the USA, South Korea and Iceland. In an effort to reinvigorate the formula, it will be the first Terminator film set entirely in the future and will initiate a story arc that will continue in two further installments.

Hey, here’s an idea! Why not get Robert Patrick to reprise his T-1000 character? Not in this movie, but in one of the next ones. They could show Skynet creating him or something, that’d be pretty neat wouldn’t it?